Americans are gearing up to celebrate Thanksgiving, which has been an annual holiday in the US since 1863. Generally, the fourth Thursday of November is marked as Thanksgiving, which precedes Black Friday. On Thanksgiving Day people meet friends and family and enjoy a meal or feast of turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry juice, potatoes, and vegetables.

AS MANY people in the US combine this holiday with Black Friday and the weekend that follows, it results in traffic congestion and shopping rush, as Thanksgiving also marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this federal holiday, Thanksgiving Day parades and festivities will be held in many cities and towns. Many schools, government and company offices will be closed, and even the public transport system will be affected.

With Americans enjoying a public holiday, they splurge on shopping, and the average online shopping discounts top 60 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. As there is a lot of inventory with retailers, and they don't mind not charging shipping fee or asking customers to shop for a minimum amount. From grocery to apparel, discounts will be heavy, and today Americans are likely to go on a whirlwind shopping spree.

How and why Thanksgiving Day came to be celebrated has different versions. As per one popular version, in 1621, colonists from Europe who had reached Plymouth in the US on Mayflower ship shared an autumn meal with native Wampanoag Indians - and this meal and event is acknowledged as one of the first celebrations marking Thanksgiving in the colonies.

For more than 200 years Thanksgiving was celebrated by individual colonies and states in North America. It was in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln called upon people to celebrate a national Thanksgiving Day each November.

Thanksgiving Day is not without controversy. When the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth, the colonists who came in the ship from Europe received a lot of help from native Indian tribes, some of whom knew English - being slaves of English masters - and taught and informed the first colonists what and how to farm corn, etc., and survive. They also helped forge alliances with other local native Indian tribes. But in time, these very natives were enslaved, mistreated, killed and manipulated as colonists began to settle and empower themselves in settlement after settlement. So, on Thanksgiving, some Native Americans and their supporters stage a protest for a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.